Posts Tagged ‘police powers’

For a moment I think we all believed the Government had actually wanted to help mortgagees. We should all have known better.

And talking of Better, it seems outside the financial casino no one gets real help.

Anyway, I know mortgages are not my speciality, but the fading, like the fairy dust it was, of the substantive part of the promise was remarkable.

First it seemed homeowners were going to be really, really helped with a six month – something or other with the banks holding fire on giving defaulters a hard time. Though I was never clear if it was a moratorium, a halt to rude phone calls, or just a six month delay before the repossession papers get served – any way eight banks said they’d do it.

That’s our curate’s egg of owned, part owned, and almost owned banks. Nationalised, as any self respecting linguist might say!

Then it seemed that homeowners at risk of having problems on their payments were going to be really helped by some long arrangement to give them breathings space. And that turns out ot be a mouse’s squeak of a ‘part’-deferral of interest payments for up to two years.

Which might be fine for those with interest only payment policies, but may be a tiny sum for many others.

And then it seems only one in ten would be helped at all by the final proposals…

Smoke and mirrors anyone?

Still it has all successfully hidden the laws for totally random stop and prove identity to be given to the police. And that one about lie detector tests for benefit claimants.

Er… will that be some miracle test that is reliable that we have never heard about, and will the identity proof turn out to be only these dodgy identity cards that Gordon loves so much?

Ah well, you don’t want to know about that anyway. But make sure you read the small print if you feel you would like some of this help with your mortgage.

Unless you want billions, in which case Gordon will mortgage you and I and several generations of our dependents, I suspect this tuppenny-halfp’ny aid on mortgages will come with chains…